At the d.school, we know design is essential to shaping meaningful educational experiences for students. With a strong history of working with K-12 educators, the d.school continues to equip teachers with unique approaches to education, as well as tangible tools to use in the classroom. In 2022, the d.school’s director of products + publications and K-12 strategy, sam seidel, started a conversation with nonprofit media lab Amplifier about collaborating on new tools. With the help of editor Jennifer Brown and program manager Susie Chang, alongside the Amplifier team and d.school educators and students, they created the Deck of Design Values, which was launched in Fall 2025.
The potential of human-centered design in education
Working with Amplifier may have been an inevitability. Founder Aaron Huey was one of the first Global Ambassadors for the d.school as well as a Media Experiments Fellow. At Amplifier, he blends human-centered design with art and storytelling to create campaigns that spark social change, including the global art phenomenon “We The People” with collaborator Shepard Fairey.
More than just a personal connection, however, the d.school and Amplifier share an affinity for seeing the potential of human-centered design in shaping our futures. Our mutual interest in each other’s work, paired with the overlaps in our goals, led us to wonder: What can we do together? And more specifically, What can we create to support young people–especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, low-income, and historically marginalized youth–in developing their creativity and deepening their confidence? How can we support young people in fulfilling their potential and ultimately imagining and building the world they deserve? With the d.school’s expertise in design pedagogy and Amplifier’s strength in designing stunning art-infused products, we started dreaming up potential projects.
Intro design tools written by students for students
Amplifier identified a need: enriching tools teachers can share with students for independent work with little facilitation. This need, paired with the d.school’s goal of getting design into the hands of more people, plus a long history of working with K-12 educators, led to the creation of the Deck of Design Values. Rooted in real d.school student experiences and design approaches, and created in Amplifier’s dynamic visual style, this deck offers flexible, joy-filled activities that reframe challenges as possibilities and remind us that young people are already problem-solvers, designers, and visionaries.
The d.school provided the content: 32 prompts that introduce design mindsets and encourage creative problem solving. Based on the d.school’s design values, the cards offer four ways of approaching design: Make cards help you learn by doing. Care cards build empathy and curiosity. Spark cards prompt playful thinking. Adapt cards deepen contemplation.
The creation of the content took on a special process. Written by d.school students Camdyn Grace Doucet, Mayahuel Gutierrez Malik, and Danna Lenis-Granada, and with contributions from d.school educators Carissa Carter and Louie Montoya, and Stanford design graduate Katrina Liou, the prompts are drawn from the classes they took and design lessons they’ve learned. As the content is written by students for students, there was a special sensitivity to making the lessons approachable and fun. Camdyn shares,
“When we were creating the deck of cards, I was really thinking back to the warm-up exercises we did in d.school classes. The goal was to help people start creating without overthinking. We wanted to introduce design concepts in a way that felt playful and approachable by embedding core ideas like iteration and problem-solving into activities that didn’t rely on prior knowledge.”
The student creators also took care to consider where the audience will encounter this deck. Mayahuel shares,
“We wanted students to feel comfortable jumping between different kinds of prompts—some rooted in their values and communities, others totally silly. That range helps students practice shifting mindsets, building confidence in both their creativity and their ability to collaborate, reflect, and take risks. Growing up in public schools, I never encountered this kind of thinking—it was all about testing and worksheets. So I hope these prompts give students a fun, creative break from the norm, while helping them explore ideas in ways that feel fresh, freeing, and deeply engaging.”
With the content created, Amplifier collaborated with an artist and designer to produce a unique, mission-driven product. Working with artist Nina Yagual, their design team was able to produce a card design that felt inspired, approachable, and beautiful.
Getting design tools into the hands of more people
Most importantly, Amplifier ensures that with every deck sold, another is gifted to an educator—expanding access, multiplying impact, and helping shape the next generation of changemakers. With Amplifier’s expertise and generous spirit, they were able to make this more than a product–it’s a campaign to unleash the brilliance of today’s youth.
Working with Amplifier confirmed for us that working with folks who are values-aligned can result in work we couldn’t have imagined on our own. We’re grateful for having been able to work with a team to help us get design values into the hands of more people. Mayahuel may have expressed our shared goal the best: “We want young people to see design not as another subject where they have to prove something, but as a space where they can play, create, and belong.”
